Lum Art Prize Winner: Alberto Lule
by Ryan P. Cruz
Alberto Lule describes his journey into the U.S. prison system as a trip into an alternate dimension. From handcuffs to holding cells, guided through labyrinthine tunnels, cutoff from all communication with friends and family, prison tries to strip away any sense of identity until you are just a number in a system.
“Prison is parallel to this universe,” he says, now at home in his new reality; an MFA student at the prestigious Claire Trevor School of the Arts at the University of California, Irvine, and already a celebrated artist both in his hometown Santa Barbara and his new digs in Los Angeles.
“You are kind of living in this parallel dimension where everything seems to be upside down,” he says. “If you're black and brown, you are the majority.”
Nearly two decades ago, Lule found himself thrust into this “alternate dimension” when he was sentenced to thirteen years in a California prison. He was young, his thoughts driven by the invincible courage of a hard-headed teenager who hadn’t yet lived enough to learn life’s big lessons.
“When you have your whole life ahead of you, you don't think too well,” he laughs.
In prison, he adjusted as well as he could at first. Getting locked up was par for the course when you were doing the things he was doing, he says, and it was one of two logical places he would end up- prison, or the cemetery. He made friends, worked out in the yard, and navigated the complex political climate among inmates in California prisons.
Artist Alberto Lule
But as the first four years dragged along, Lule found himself wanting more. He started looking for things that would take him out of the “prison mental space,” eventually picking up a simple pencil and learning to draw. The creativity flowing from his mind through his hand and onto the page transported him beyond the walls of his cell. He devoured art books, and started using his drawings as currency for commissary or clout among his cellmates.
His early works were simple drawings, tattoo designs, and custom commissions, but the freedom he got from art soon spread to other avenues. He began to change the way he thought, studying philosophy and other subjects and eventually enrolling in the prison's college correspondence courses. He says he realized he could overcome the effects of not only his physical imprisonment, but also the mental prison he had been placed into his whole life, by the institutions that gave him the identities they wanted to — a child of illegal immigrants; a gang member; a prisoner.
By the time he was up for parole, Lule had chosen his own identity, one that he would carry proudly and use to challenge these systems he had unknowingly been fighting his entire life: the artist.
Upon release, he enrolled in Santa Barbara City College’s transitional program for formerly incarcerated students, and flourished in his new environment. There were times he felt like an outsider on campus, older than his classmates, but he kept charging forward. At SBCC, he met his mentor, sculpture professor Arturo Ramos, one of the first people who really believed in and supported his art career. Just like in prison, he kept his head down and focused on his goals, and by May 2018, he was graduating with four associates degrees, and had been accepted into almost any UC of his choice. On top of all that, he was selected as his class’s commencement speaker. During his speech, he announced he would be studying for his bachelors at UCLA.
In Los Angeles, Lule’s skills had matured to the point where he was ready to execute full exhibitions that explored mass incarceration and challenged the ideas of what people called beautiful. His 2019 installation, The Privatization of Correctional Institutions, displayed “readymades,” everyday items created out of necessity in prisons: a lighter fashioned from a pencil, a paperclip, and a scrap of electric wire; a shank made from a plastic pen and a sharpened strip of metal; a tattoo gun MacGyvered together with a staple for a needle.
The readymades, and the exhibition’s two other most striking pieces — a mannequin outfitted in a California Department of Corrections prison uniform, complete with the denim overshirt and bright orange pants with “PRISONER” emblazoned down the leg, and a full-size recreation of a jailhouse visitation booth, with a plexiglass window separating two cold steel tables and a pair of phone receivers on either side — were unlike anything displayed on UCLA’s campus, or any contemporary museum for that matter.
The mannequin looked as if it belonged in the glossy front window of a high-fashion district, and though the clothes were quite literally ripped off the back of a California state prisoner, it evoked a sense of “cool.” In fact, people have offered to buy the prison clothes off the mannequins, something Lule still finds unbelievable. But the reaction proves the deeper point to Lule's work: the commodification of the bodies and works of the oppressed, and challenging who decides the cultural value of art.
“I'm trying to abolish the old modes and strategies of displaying artwork,” Lule says. “One of the things that I like to do is compare and critique institutional spaces.”
Museums and galleries represent institutions that have power, he says, and can be seen as “the authorities of culture.”
“What society thinks is beautiful is controlled by these institutions,” Lule says.
The visitation booth in a museum setting was jarring to those who aren’t familiar with life behind bars, but as the gallery’s visitors experienced it themselves, sitting on each side, touching palms through the window and talking through the crackled static of the plastic phone, they were forced to imagine what it would be like to have their communication with the outside world stripped down to this dehumanizing interaction.
“I think the issues I'm bringing up are so important —they are so visceral — that I have to do everything I can to bring you into this experience,” Lule says.
And in this world Lule brings us into, we’re forced to reconcile our own relationship with the U.S. criminal justice system. If somebody wrongs another, does that warrant them losing their freedom? Maybe. But their humanity? That gets even harder to pin down. At what point does the punishment account for the transgression, and are we okay with how these decisions are made and executed?
In Lule’s own life, he’s seen firsthand how easily his body and image can be controlled by institutions. When he was arrested, his name was blasted in local newspapers, and he felt like he was treated as a character in a salacious storyline. Any rumor or allegation repeated in court was printed again and again, without any chance for Lule to speak for himself. Once the case was settled, and he was found not to be the criminal mastermind that prosecutors had painted him out to be, he felt betrayed that no newspaper cared to follow up.
Alberto Lule, Common Prison Dittos #2, tattoo stencil ink on paper, (DATE?)
At UCLA, he used his new surroundings to shed a light on the power dynamics between these institutions, specifically between education and incarceration. As co-chair of the Underground Scholars Initiative, he advocated for and helped lead a group of formerly incarcerated students pushing to reverse the school-to-prison pipeline.
“The university can be seen as giving power to people,” he says. “Prison is a place of punishment, and the university is designating power, as gatekeepers of knowledge, giving privilege. They’re not that far off, they are two sides of the same coin.”
As he approached his graduation from UCLA, Lule began receiving residences across Los Angeles. His work was recently included in We Live, Memories of Resistance at the Oxy Arts Gallery at Occidental College and Language Games at the Fullerton College Art Gallery. In 2020, he was also the recipient of the Kay Nielsen Memorial Award from the Hammer Museum and a residency from Tiger Strikes Asteroid Los Angeles. His work in these galleries expands on his previous exhibitions with readymades and a new series of abstract installations made with forensic fingerprint powder — the use of materials created to investigate and imprison individuals now being used to create something beautiful.
Alberto Lule, Abstract Drawing, forensic finger power on paper, date (?)
In one live performance, Lule strips down to his boxers and recreates the process of being booked into jail — laid face down, hands behind your back — with the results being rendered in the forensic powder on plexiglass. The performance, he says, explores “the role of agents of authorities and their control over bodies.”
When he was deciding where to study after UCLA, he said he was blessed to have a wealth of options. He was accepted into graduate programs at UCLA , UC Berkeley, UC Irvine, and CalArts. Despite the temptation to go to Berkeley or CalArts, he eventually settled on UC Irvine's well-known art program. “It’s empowering to have options. Anybody would want to have those types of decisions in your life.”
Most recently, he’s come into another role, teaching art to seventh grade students in the LA Unified School District at UCLA’s Community School for Visual and Performing Arts. In class, the kids call him “Mr. Berto,” and he laughs when he says they call him their new favorite teacher, cause he looks “cool.”
His artwork, and his writing that goes alongside it, have progressed immensely since he first arrived in Los Angeles, and lately he has started to expand into sculpture. He’s always working, but says he prefers to spend time outside the studio, soaking up the city and gaining inspiration.
“I drive around a lot,” he says. “I like to see things. I like to watch people, I don’t like to be in my studio.”
This fall, Alberto Lule will be honored at an art talk at the Atkinson Gallery, Santa Barbara City College, in partnership with the Carolyn Glasoe Bailey Foundation and Lum Art Magazine.
The Lum Art Prize feature is sponsored by the Carolyn Glasoe Bailey Foundation.
